The swap is viewed by the Republican Party establishment, in an election year, as an Obama media diversion from delicious and well-deserved dereliction of duty charges against the Veterans Administration.

Republicans are also unhappy, and neoconservatives particularly so, because it signals the public end of the end in Afghanistan — an endless play-war for the United States government that all but evaporated from the mind of the American public several years ago. In an age of economic contraction, average Americans see no reason to pay for Afghanistan any longer, absent some sign of benefit, some visible victory. Neocons may insist that absence of victory is not evidence of the absence of victory, but I think by now, even Don Rumsfeld gets the picture. Just as for the Soviets, Afghanistan has been a USG-directed waste of trillions of dollars, millions of Afghan lives, and hundreds of thousands of American lives and families damaged or ruined by a soldier's service in uniform.